What if this expansion will also spawn Warcraft 4?

What if the beginning of this expansion the Legion does attack and we are all but utterly defeated?

To me, this would explain why Anduin goes to free Garrosh - desparate times call for desparate measures.

Then, the speculation is correct about going back in time to Draenor. Wrathion sees that we were never prepared for the destruction that is coming and he does go a different route learning about the ability to go back in time to when the Legion first gets to Draenor. Cue the rest of the speculation and the name of the expansion that people have already been theorizing over.

What if World of Warcraft does go back in time and permanently changes (retcons) everything that has happened? After this expansion, they could do anything they want from the point of Warcraft 2 onward, completely diverting from the story that we know from Warcraft 3 and WoW? Even if I am wrong about my next point, this is still possible if this expansion deals heavily with time travel.

Whatever we do in this expansion could permanently change the world in that timeline, while we are left to wonder what happens in the timeline where the legion assaults Azeroth. Until Warcraft 4 comes out.

Warcraft 4 could follow a separate timeline than WoW much like EQL and EQ2, and other games, are the same world but different continuities. It would give us a world that alliances would again be able to be splintered, and it would not necessarily be Horde vs Alliance. Everyone could be represented separately, even the new Lich King and other races that we've come to know in WoW. And all of this would be after all the great heroes (players) have fled back in time and they are left to deal with the Legion without many of their greatest heroes.

wouldn't it be amazing if they did something similar to cross console(ffxiv ffxi etc) online play

say they have a wow.exe, and a wowHD.exe, two separate installs, sure they'd have to work on models a bit more, more dev time(a little)
but main legitimate thing people complain about is how outdated wow looks.

imagine for a moment a completely new engine running wow with those hot bloom effects, leaves swirling up from your running, soft footprints on a beach
real blood and gore splattering around in combat... pure physX experiences.

and the people with bad computers (like me) can still be playing on LowD

I think that making Warcraft 4 as an alternate timeline would be a big mistake. That sort of thing is interesting to explore now and again like the alternate world in Twilight of Aspects but I don't think many people want to see warcraft 4 or a wow expansion become an alternate timeline story instead of moving stories forward in the main wow universe.

What if the beginning of this expansion the Legion does attack and we are all but utterly defeated?

To me, this would explain why Anduin goes to free Garrosh - desparate times call for desparate measures.

Then, the speculation is correct about going back in time to Draenor. Wrathion sees that we were never prepared for the destruction that is coming and he does go a different route learning about the ability to go back in time to when the Legion first gets to Draenor. Cue the rest of the speculation and the name of the expansion that people have already been theorizing over.

What if World of Warcraft does go back in time and permanently changes (retcons) everything that has happened? After this expansion, they could do anything they want from the point of Warcraft 2 onward, completely diverting from the story that we know from Warcraft 3 and WoW? Even if I am wrong about my next point, this is still possible if this expansion deals heavily with time travel.

Whatever we do in this expansion could permanently change the world in that timeline, while we are left to wonder what happens in the timeline where the legion assaults Azeroth. Until Warcraft 4 comes out.

Warcraft 4 could follow a separate timeline than WoW much like EQL and EQ2, and other games, are the same world but different continuities. It would give us a world that alliances would again be able to be splintered, and it would not necessarily be Horde vs Alliance. Everyone could be represented separately, even the new Lich King and other races that we've come to know in WoW. And all of this would be after all the great heroes (players) have fled back in time and they are left to deal with the Legion without many of their greatest heroes.

What do you think?

as long as i can keep my character i'd love it, but it won't happen (for one they'd have to re-do every single zone in the game).

They're a few years early to be announcing another Warcraft RTS. The Starcraft II team is still working on Legacy of the Void, and that would be the obvious team to put on Warcraft 4.

They might start working on another Warcraft RTS after they're done with Starcraft though. They could make the plot work by having the events happen parallel to a WoW expansion, where you'd get some of the story in the RTS and some of the story in the expansion. There's also other options to make it work. If they want to make another Warcraft RTS, they can make it work with WoW.